CONTADOR HARRISON

How software developers should optimise apps

Posted on September 23, 2014 11:08 am

There more and more users using ­smartphone apps to perform a ­variety of transactions from purchasing bus tickets in Kenya to online banking in Finland, many ­companies are now finding that they have to produce a mobile app or risk getting left behind in what is being dubbed “a mad rush for the mobile space.”With thousands of new apps being published every week, it’s important to look for ways to get the most visibility and the highest ratings possible. Optimising the quality of apps by developers is a key strategy.What studies have shown is that higher quality app can translate to higher user ratings, generally better rankings, more downloads, and higher retention.The quality of your apps is something a developer should consider addressing both before and after launch. A recent study conducted in France showed that gaining users after the launch of a poor quality app can be hard sell and recovery very costly and maintaining ranking of high-quality apps is made easier through continual improvements.

While many companies tend to focus on the aesthetics and functionality when creating a mobile app, studies have shown only a handful of companies actually spend time to ensure that their apps are stable. In mobility what matters is speed and performance and even now we’re still seeing ­companies simply throwing money to upgrade ­infrastructure to speed up apps without addressing the root cause.Indeed, in a crowded mobile app space, the end-user ­experience can give a developer the competitive advantage.In your blogger’s experience, instead of simply providing more bandwidth it is better to track the app’s flow, from user interactions with the app to the completion of the transaction.In one of the project, I was involved sometimes back, tracking user interactions helps identify crashes and slowdowns that cause a bottleneck and helps developers fix the app right where it matters most. However, I only approve app tracking that captures no actual content of the user and should only monitor the customer interactions with the app, such as sequence of taps, code that was executed before the crash or even strength of the mobile signal.Read qualities needed for such developments.